Jeanne Lamon, Tafelmusik Director, to Step Down After 33 Years

Thursday, October 18, 2012 - 10:45 AM

Jeanne Lamon, music director of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, says she will retire in 2014, ending a 33-year run at the helm of one of the more adventurous early-music groups on the world stage.

In a statement, the orchestra said it will begin a search for a successor.

A baroque violinist, Lamon came to the Toronto-based period-instrument ensemble in 1981, two years after its founding. The ensemble’s resume includes over 80 recordings, international tours, an annual series at Trinity-St. Paul's United Church in Toronto and several awards from the classical music press.

Its 2009 multimedia show, "The Galileo Project," was turned into a CD/DVD set and was a WQXR Album of the Week in March. The set used the 400th anniversary of the invention the telescope as a pretext to look at the music of Galileo Galilei's era. The recording was the first installment on an in-house label, Tafelmusik Media.

Lamon was born in Larchmont, NY in 1949, and studied violin at the Westchester Conservatory of Music. Later she studied at Brandeis University and in Amsterdam, before settling in Toronto in the early 1970s. She was hired as Tafelmusik’s music director after appearing as a soloist with the group.

Lamon will continue to teach at the University of Toronto, where Tafelmusik is the Baroque orchestra-in-residence and hosts an annual summer institute.

I am sorry to hear of Ms Lamon's announced planned retirement for 2014, but it just goes to show that nothing lasts forever, no matter how great--& it REALLY was great. Having both studied & taught at the Westchester Conservatory of Music myself, I was also pleasantly surprised to learn of her affiliation there.

I think my favorite of her Tafelmusik recordings is "Henry Purcell: Ayers for the Theatre" which I first heard actually on WQXR--MANY years ago! I have yet to hear a better reading or recording of that body of work anywhere else, & I still listen to it quite often in an i-pod playlist that includes allot of Handel--as Purcell was possibly Handel's closest predecessor, at least in this particular vein-style of music. Of course, my preferred ensemble for those Handel recordings is The English Concert with Trevor Pinnock (who is also already retired from that group, in 2003).